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Born into a prominent Basque family on November 12, 1735, in the province of Vizcaya, Spain, Diego de Gardoqui was a treasured son of Don José Ignacio Gardoqui y Azpegorta and his wife Maria Simona. Groomed to be a banker, he was sent...
The Revolutionary Era West, before and after American Independence
In December 1772, a year before angry colonists heaved chests of East India tea into Boston Harbor, the British government seemed on the cusp of creating a new North American colony. Named “Vandalia,” in honor of Queen Charlotte’s...
Judith Sargent Murray and the Declaration of Independence
Judith Stevens (as she was then) was just twenty-five years old when a group of men in Philadelphia boldly declared the American colonies’ independence from England. Insisting that all men were created equal, and claiming that all...
"What We Leave the Earth": The African Burial Ground in New York City
In October 2021, the African Burial Ground National Monument commemorated the thirtieth anniversary of the New York City slave cemetery’s rediscovery by the General Services Administration (GSA). In 1991, the GSA started construction...
Inventing American Diplomacy
In 1783, the expatriate artist Benjamin West began what became his most memorable painting, "The Peacemakers." West intended to produce a group portrait of the diplomats whose negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, but...
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The Righteous Revolution of Mercy Otis Warren
Seven months after British Regulars marched on Lexington and Concord, three months after King George III declared the colonies in a state of rebellion, and a month after British artillery leveled the town of Falmouth (now Portland,...
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Unruly Americans in the Revolution
Nearly all of the blockbuster biographies of the Founding Fathers—whether the subject is George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, or John Adams—portray the vast majority of ordinary Americans as mere bystanders. Although the authors of...
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The Indians’ War of Independence
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson clearly described the role of American Indians in the American Revolution. In addition to his other oppressive acts, King George III had "endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of...
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Winning the Vote: A History of Voting Rights
Voting Rights on the Eve of the Revolution The basic principle that governed voting in colonial America was that voters should have a "stake in society." Leading colonists associated democracy with disorder and mob rule, and believed...
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When the Past Speaks to the Present: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History and a professor of history at Harvard University. Her books include The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008), which received the Pulitzer...
The League of the Iroquois
No Native people affected the course of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history more than the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, of present-day upstate New York. Historians have been attempting to explain how and why ever since,...
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The Legal Status of Women, 1776–1830
State law rather than federal law governed women’s rights in the early republic. The authority of state law meant that much depended upon where a woman lived and the particular social circumstances in her region of the country. The...
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Andrew Jackson and the Constitution
In 1860, biographer James Parton concluded that Andrew Jackson was "a most law-defying, law obeying citizen." Such a statement is obviously contradictory. Yet it accurately captures the essence of the famous, or infamous, Jackson....
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Nineteenth-Century Feminist Writings
Contemporaries sometimes called the nineteenth century "The Woman’s Century." Certainly it is true that there were dramatic changes in the status and rights of women between the 1790s and 1900, foreshadowing even greater changes in...
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The Indian Removal Act
In the early nineteenth century, as European empires and the fledgling United States jockeyed for position in the West, true power was still in the hands of Native peoples. They far outnumbered whites and controlled resources and...
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The Battle for Baltimore
Bitter over the American declaration of war in 1812, when the British Empire had faced the emperor Napoleon at the peak of his power, the British sought payback in 1814. The war erupted over American anger at the British for seizing...
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Advice (Not Taken) for the French Revolution from America
"I come as a friend to offer my help to this very interesting republic," wrote the nineteen-year-old Marquis de Lafayette from aboard the Victoire as it sailed from France across the ocean to the rebellious British colonies in the...
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The US and Spanish American Revolutions
If one says "American Revolution" in the United States today, it is assumed that what is being referred to is the North American liberation struggles against the British Empire in the late eighteenth century. But the British North...
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Two Revolutions in the Atlantic World: Connections between the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolution
The late eighteenth century saw two successful anti-colonial revolutions unfold in the Americas. The first was in the United States, culminating in 1783. The second was in Haiti, then the French colony of Saint-Domingue. That...
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First Ladies’ Contributions to Political Issues and the National Welfare
The US Constitution assigns no duties or responsibilities to the president’s spouse. Every woman had to define for herself the role she wanted to play. From the blank slate that Martha Washington encountered in 1789, the job gradually...
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Martha Washington Creates the Role of First Lady
During nearly forty-one years of marriage, Martha and George Washington lived together in harmony and mutual enjoyment. Never did he play the overbearing patriarch nor she the querulous nag. Theirs was a peaceful domestic partnership,...
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A Poem Links Unlikely Allies in 1775: Phillis Wheatley and George Washington
One of the most surprising connections of the American Revolutionary era emerged at the very beginning of the war between the African American poet Phillis Wheatley and the commander in chief of the American forces, George Washington....
Making a Film about Alexander Hamilton
A few years ago, my colleagues and I made a documentary, Alexander Hamilton , for the Public Television series American Experience . When it was completed, we did a lot of screenings, interviews, and Q&As for all kinds of...
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